#147: Previous assessments in Natural History

The GCSE in Natural History is a brand new course - one of the first new GCSEs for many years. It takes a lot to get to this stage.

The latest issue of Cambridge Assessment's 'Research Matters' journal explores previous occasions when Natural History has been assessed.

The link will also provide access to further links to see previous issues of the journal.

The journal is published by Cambridge Assessment. This is Issue 36

The article is written by Gillian Cooke.

As is says at the start of the article:

Concern about our natural environment is at an unprecedented level. It permeates through all levels of media as the effects of climate change and fluctuations of biodiversity manifest throughout the world. There is a thirst for knowledge to understand our environment better and the impact of humans on the natural world. But while the introduction of a new GCSE in Natural History by OCR chimes with our times, natural history itself is not a new qualification, as shown from an archive of over 160 years of qualification documentation from the University of Cambridge Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), a predecessor of OCR, which contains a rich resource of natural history type qualifications available to children at all levels and ages.

There is also a useful definition of natural history suggested:

Natural History is variously defined, but commonly described as “a domain of inquiry involving organisms, including animals, fungi, and plants, in their natural environment, leaning more towards observational than experimental methods of study”. 

Fuelled by curiosity and, in some cases, imperialistic vanity, wealthy explorers of the early modern period sought to dispel images of fantastical creatures and flora from folklore with accurate scientific observation. So began a trend to collect and display natural history findings, and a rise in the popularity of natural history museums, which was at a peak in Britain between the 1880s and 1900s (Rader & Cain, 2015).

Source:

Rader, K., & Cain, V. (2015). From natural history to science: display and the transformation of American museums of science and nature. Museum and Society, 6(2), 152-171.